


Give in to the Dork Side

by likeadeuce



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-14
Updated: 2010-02-14
Packaged: 2017-10-07 06:38:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/62424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likeadeuce/pseuds/likeadeuce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wesley, Lilah, and Star Wars.  (Who's scruffy-looking?)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Give in to the Dork Side

Wesley came out of Lilah Morgan's washroom with a towel around his waist, and the first words he heard were, Give in to the power of the Dark Side. He considered the possibility of some higher power trying to tell him something, but then dismissed it. He enjoyed a good space opera as much as any child of his era, but he had never gone so far as to consider George Lucas a deity.

He came into the bedroom where Lilah, wrapped in a silk kimono, lounged half on top of the still-tangled sheets, eating gourmet ice cream straight from the carton in slow, languid bites. Wesley had every reason to know how hard this woman worked, yet he could almost buy this picture of perfect, unconcerned idleness. He thought of a cat, the way she moved from tight-coiled ruthless predator to indulged royal lazer. To say nothing of the clawmarks currently pulsing on his back, and something that could have been a bite on his inner thigh. He had found the mark in the shower, and it seemed like he should have remembered where it came from. But then, a man could presumably only feel so many sensations at once, and Lilah frequently managed to do four or five things to him, simultaneously. He was working on a theory that, at certain key moments, she developed more than the normal number of hands, but whenever he had the opportunity to check this hypothesis, he ended up being rather distracted.

Now she lay on her side, like Cleopatra on the barge, regarding the television with the characteristically feline expression – a little curious, but mostly bored – that she directed at anything she couldn't see any way to eat, drink, kill, or fuck. Not that he was looking. It was just that his clothes had ended up on the other side of the bed, and if that seemed like hours ago, that's because it was. She had offered him the use of her shower, and by accepting, he had offered her the opportunity to go through his pockets, since he had made sure there wasn't anything to find. It wasn't a bad gesture, the illusion of trust without actual trust. Now his only objective was to cross the room, get dressed and get out of there. A long night's work lay ahead of him, and even if he had decided to slack off this once – well, the phrase kept running through his head, and he kept thinking that it really shouldn't strike him as quite so funny: I need to get home and feed my hostage.

Still, there wasn't any harm in talking while he was clearing out, and this was really too good to pass up. "I knew you had some big secret that I'd eventually discover." Sitting on the bed, not looking at her, he started to pull on his jeans. "You're a closet Star Dork."

"This?" She gave the television that bored yet wary look again, as though she wasn't sure exactly what it was, or how it had gotten there. "There wasn't anything else. It was just on." Projecting a wounded peevishness that no one had consulted her before arranging the programming schedule.

Wes glanced up and saw the end of Jedi, the epic final battle for Luke Skywalker's soul between the dark side and. . .well, whatever the other side was. "Naturally," he said, "You'll be pulling for Palpatine."

"Who?"

He fastened the zipper and bent over, looking under the bed for his shirt. "The old guy with the skin condition."

"I mean, who's the dork?" She cuffed his bare back and added, "I think you want this."

"I'm sure I do," he answered in what he hoped was a low, sexy growl. Then he turned around and realized she was holding his shirt. She smirked, and he yanked the red Oxford from her hand. "Who is more the dork, the dork or the dork who tries to hide it?"

If she recognized his Obi-Wan impression, she didn't show it. He started pulling on his shirt, and felt the collar, wet against his skin. He dimly recalled that Lilah might have been wearing the shirt at some point, and then he thought that there were probably fluids on this garment other than sweat, some of his and some of hers, and he was torn between wanting to burn the shirt or to fold it up in a freezer bag to be pulled out on special occasions.

Lilah turned her attention back to the television. Lounging on one elbow, she slowly raised the spoon to her mouth and sucked ice cream off of it. He wasn't actually intending to watch her, but, well, buttoning the shirt took a little time, and his eyes had to be somewhere. Better Lilah than Mark Hammil.

Is this the one with the Munchkins?" she asked.

"Ewoks."

"And Jaffa the Hut?"

"Jabba," he said. "And you're protesting too much."

Still considering the movie like a skeptical cat, she asked, "This is the last one, though?"

Wesley hadn't seen either of the prequels; he only had a vague image of the teen idol-boy band type they had cast as a young Darth Vader. "In a world ruled by a merciful God, yes."

"This is the only one I actually saw, then." She lifted her spoon and pointed at the TV. "It would have been – nineteen eighty-three. Eighth grade. I skipped school with seven guys from the debate team and went to a matinee at the Uptown in Cleveland Park."

The theater name clicked from an East Coast trip he had taken with Virginia Bryce. "You grew up in Washington?" This came out sounding more surprised than he had intended. Not that there was anything odd about that; it actually seemed to fit her. It was more the idea of Lilah growing up anywhere.

She caught his tone, and lowered her chin to give him an amused and predatory look. "No. I was hatched in a swamp and raised in a greenhouse for evil lawyers." Lilah frowned. "Come to think of it, that does sound a lot like D.C."

He raised an eyebrow at her. "Seven guys?"

"Yes." She set down the icecream, hugged her knees and sat up straight. He swore he could actually see her brain shift into gear, as she started to rattle off on her fingers. "Danny Rostron, Chad Buckley, Trip Newell, Mike McCarthy. . .no, no, McCardle. Mike O'Malley, Josh Bronstein, and. . ." she pumped her fist in a victorious gesture. "Kevin Hunter. I didn't give a rat's ass about the movie, but I liked the ratio."

"Naturally," Wesley drawled. "How'd that work out for you?"

She ignored the question. "We thought we were real bad-asses, too. Very subtle, walking up Connecticut Avenue in our school uniforms."

"Uniforms? Skirts and suspenders? Knee-socks maybe?"

"Trying to get a visual for the young-Lilah-and-the-seven-dorks jerkoff fantasy that's going to keep you warm tonight?"

"And some people might say we don't understand each other."

"A modified blackwatch tartan. Suspenders." She pointed to her neck. "Green ascot. And patent leather shoes."

"The kind that reflect your underwear?"

"Only when you wear it."

"Only then," he agreed, and comforted himself that it wasn't the thought of an actual knicker-free teenage schoolgirl that was threatening, against the physical odds after the last few hours, to give him another erection. He was almost dressed now, and he really should be going. But then, it wouldn't pay to get her too suspicious about what the hurry was. He lay down across the bed beside her and reached out to gather a handful of her hair. She gave him a What the fuck? look, and he then he twirled it around his hand until he almost reached her scalp, at which point he pulled, hard. "So did you ever try the Leia hair?"

"Leia?" She gripped his wrist and dug a nail into the soft underside, until he had to let go. "Please." She rolled away from him and lay on her back. "I wanted to be Han Solo. You think I fantasized about putting on a metal bikini and dancing for a giant slug? Not to mention every horny thirteen-year-old on the planet."

"Speaking as one of those horny thirteen-year-olds? It had its good points."

"See, now I'm disillusioned. I thought thirteen-year-old Wesley would have outgrown that kind of thing and moved on to reading demon scripture in ancient Sumerian."

"No, actually." He looked at the ceiling, frowning to remember. "I saw all three films for the first time in one day. When the first ones came out, I was still at home with tutors, for the most part. Mum thought all films were vulgar, and Father was still getting used to the idea of color. But by Jedi, I was at school, so I took the train to London with some other boys." He smiled at the memory, which had been one of the better times he'd had with his schoolmates. "I was very snobbish about the whole thing."

"I can't imagine."

"Disregarding that. . ." He rolled over on one elbow, so he could look her in the eyes. "The spectacle won me over. And I don't only remember Leia's bikini. I fancy every teenage boy thinks he's Luke Skywalker at some point. He wants to grow up to be Han, marry Leia, and have Obi-Wan for his father." He smiled. "Besides, Alec Guinness? All the Britishness and honor and the stiff upper lip? Father did make exceptions for David Lean." Wesley didn't share many tastes with his father, but he knew they both still preferred any picture by the British master to every picture by anyone else. "So it was my first time seeing Star Wars, but I'd already watched Bridge on the River Kwai nine or ten times."

Lilah shook her head. "That explains so much."

"Still disregarding. Of course, I had read up on the mythology of Star Wars, so I was full of discourses on Joseph Campbell and the hero with a thousand faces. I got to be pseudo-intellectual about the experience, while my, um, friends were mostly in it for the light sabers." He only stumbled over 'friends' for half a second, but he saw the light go off in Lilah's eyes, and that was another thing with cats. When they started purring, you could forget they were predators, and then you let your guard down, showed them a flash of soft underbelly, and it turned out they had teeth.

"Um, friends?" she repeated, the way he knew she would. "Are those anything like actual friends?"

He sat straight up, got out of bed, and started looking for his jacket. "There's a sort of comfort in your being so predictable." Pulling the brown suede around his shoulders, he said, "I suppose you always preferred Blade Runner?"

"What?" She wet her lips, exactly like a cat, taking only a second to respond. "You mean, I do a decent impression of a human being, until the moment that calls for an emotional response, and then I give myself away?"

The anger flashed out as quickly as it had come, and he sat back on the bed. "You got that so quickly, it's a little terrifying." He even smiled to show her the wound hadn't gone deep. This was Lilah, after all, and he was the idiot who started trading truths for probable lies. He wondered if she even came from Washington, if the names she had rattled off went with real people – maybe the first seven guys she had fucked, or murdered, or tortured for pleasure -- or if she had made them up on the spot. Well, a man who lay down with a tiger knew what he was doing, and if he started mistaking it for a kitten, he only had himself to blame.

"That's the way to be a good sport." She patted the bed beside her, and pointed at the television, which had moved on to the movie's final scene. "The good guys just won, you should be happy."

"Who says I'm not happy?" The robe fell open again, she was practically pushing her breasts into his face, and he obligingly reached out a hand.

"Easy now." She caught his wrist again, and nodded at the screen, where the credits rolled to the tune of John Williams bombast. "Xena's supposed to be on next. I think this may be the one where. . ."

"Lilah, I am beginning to get an inkling of how you operate. And I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that there is no episode in which Xena and Gabrielle make out. . ."

"You just have no appreciation of subtext."

". . .and," he continued, "You've just been using that line, on a regular basis I might add, to get me to stick around."

And suddenly, she pulled away completely, grabbed the top of the robe in one hand to cover her breasts, and gave him a hard look. "Now why would I want a thing like that?"

He got to his feet, swearing this was the last time. "All right, I'm gone."

He was half out the door, when she called, "I'd say I love you, Captain Solo, but you'd just tell me you already know."

And that was from the second film, which meant that, on one point at least. . . Looking back inside, he pronounced, "You're a liar and and a dork."

"Well, you're a stuck up, half-witted, scruffy-looking nerf-herder."

"Who's scruffy-looking?"

He mocked blowing her a kiss, and she screwed up her face. "I'd rather kiss a wookie."

"Right," he said. "Let me know how Xena and Gabby make out."

She saluted, "Aye aye, captain Solo. And Wes? If you tell anybody about this conversation? You're bantha fodder."


End file.
